The Visual Studio Code Team covers the 1.97 January 2025 release, with in-depth updates on GitHub Copilot features, editing improvements, DevOps tooling, and developer experience enhancements.

Visual Studio Code January 2025 (Version 1.97) Release Notes

The Visual Studio Code Team introduces significant new features and updates in the January 2025 (version 1.97) release. This version is packed with productivity improvements, Copilot advancements, security features, deeper DevOps integration, and many enhancements for developers. Below are the main highlights:

Key Highlights

GitHub Copilot: Smarter Coding Assistance

Copilot Next Edit Suggestions (Preview): Copilot can now predict likely next edits, showing suggestions not just for completions but also for refactoring and evolving code. These suggestions appear dynamically; configuration options let you control display and acceptance behavior.
Copilot Edits General Availability: Copilot Edits is now fully available, allowing AI-assisted refactoring and edits across multiple files, managed directly from Copilot Chat. Acceptance and discarding of suggested changes have been improved, with granular control for individual edits and time-based auto-acceptance options.
Apply in Editor: Users can instantly apply suggested code blocks from Copilot Chat to their workspace files. The workflow now prompts for file creation if the suggested file doesn’t exist.
Temporal Context and Workspace Indexes: Copilot is contextually smarter, using files you’ve recently interacted with and a local/remote codebase index to provide accurate, relevant suggestions.
Model Availability: Expanded AI model support, including OpenAI’s o3-mini and Google’s Gemini 2.0 Flash, for improved code intelligence and explanations.
Experimental Features: Agent Mode enables autonomous Copilot operations for editing, error-checking, and terminal commands. Agentic codebase search and Copilot Vision (image understanding in prompts) are in preview in VS Code Insiders.

Core Editor and Extension Improvements

Command Palette and Quick Inputs: Palette can now be moved and positioned flexibly in the window. Preset and custom layouts are supported.
Trusted Extension Publisher Dialog: Enhanced extension management helps ensure that only trusted publishers’ extensions are installed, bolstering development environment security.
Extension Filter Upgrades: Find outdated or recently-updated extensions more easily with @outdated and @recentlyUpdated filters.

Productivity and Debugging Enhancements

Compound Logs & Output Panel Filtering: Aggregate multiple logs into a single view and filter logs by text or severity. Export/import logs for collaboration.
Git Blame and GitHub Integration: Expanded blame information, direct links to GitHub from editor, and visible avatars for repository contributors.
Enhanced Notebooks: Inline values now appear upon cell execution, and Markdown cell rendering supports custom fonts.
Terminal Improvements: Font ligature support, PowerShell and shell completions, sticky scroll visibility for long commands, improved control for closing terminals, and ConEmu progress support.
Debug Console and Variables: Improved history and value searching, plus more reliable content selection and new commands for pretty-printing JavaScript.

Python & TypeScript Updates

Python REPL and Debugging: Native VS Code REPL launch from terminals, Python no-config debugging, and accelerated code navigation with Go to Implementation via Pylance.
Experimental AI Code Action for Python: Use Copilot and Pylance to generate code symbols from prompts.
TypeScript 5.7.3 Recovery Release: Bug fixes and import regression resolution, along with preview support for TypeScript 5.8 and new Tree-Sitter based syntax highlighting.

Engineering & Community Contributions

A substantial round of bug fixes, resource optimizations (notably for large TypeScript workspaces), and community pull requests is acknowledged in the release.

Security and Accessibility

Security-related bug fixes in recovery updates 1.97.1 and 1.97.2.
Publisher trust dialog and improved extension trust management.
Enhanced accessibility sounds, status dialogs, keyboard navigation for Copilot Edits, and more screen reader-friendly notifications.

Remote Development

Smoother SSH and Dev Container workflows, migration paths for legacy servers, and WSL improvements.

For Developers and Extension Authors

New document paste APIs for extensibility and file comments.
Proposed terminal completion provider API and support for identifying shell types.

Learning More

For the full version and technical deep-dive, visit the VS Code updates page.

Acknowledgements

A detailed list of contributors’ issue triaging, code commits, and extension support included in this release is available in the full article, with thanks to all community participants and external contributors.

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